


Royally

by seashadows



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, M/M, Mpreg
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-31
Updated: 2016-01-31
Packaged: 2018-05-17 11:07:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5866990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seashadows/pseuds/seashadows
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As soon as the door to Bilbo Baggins's smial opens, Kíli discovers a new fact about himself that changes his life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Royally

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mm8](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mm8/gifts).



> For [mm8/mahmfic](http://archiveofourown.org/users/mm8/pseuds/mm8) as a 2016 My Slashy Valentine gift.

Kíli has never cursed his inability to listen to dams’ tales so strongly as when the Hobbit pulls open that round green door in irritation. A smell like he’s never smelt before hits Kíli’s nostrils: a bit like some sweaty grown Dwarves he knows (Uncle and Dwalin being the worst offenders), but stronger, muskier, and a bit tangy in his nose. He bows with his brother, but as soon as Bilbo Baggins turns tail and huffs off, he whispers to Fíli, “Did you smell that?” 

“’S’probably you,” says Fíli, ever irreverent. Honestly, he’ll be sorry one day when Kíli is his only friend, if he keeps acting like that. “And food. He’s got fish, I think!” 

“No, no.” Kíli sniffs the air as he follows Fíli into the smial, where the Hobbit sputters and mutters and gesticulates over the fact that they’re wiping their feet on his mother’s _gory box_ , whatever on Arda that is. He hopes it isn’t full of shrunken heads. “It’s…” No, he’s never smelt this before, but he’s sure he knows what he is. “Alphas!” he says into Fíli’s ear. His brother winces. “I didn’t know these Hobbit-lads had alphas and all that. He stinks of it.” 

Now that gets Fíli’s attention. Beads jingling, Fíli turns to him and gives him a queer look that bores into Kíli’s eyes, amplified by the low light of the smial. Fíli’s never looked this much like Uncle, and more strongly than ever, Kíli can see what he’ll look like as a king. “You can’t smell the alignment, everyone knows that,” he says, and unless Kíli’s missed his mark – and he hasn’t missed in a long time, arrows or otherwise – his voice shakes on the words. “Now you go along and get your fill. We’ve got a long journey ahead of us tomorrow.” 

With that, Fíli turns on his heel and lopes off into the darker recesses of the smial. Kíli stares after him. Of course everyone knows you can’t smell the alignment so young, save for…save for…what _is_ it? _’Amad_ tells stories of it in the Old Tongue around the hearth-fire, with Uncle Thorin smoking his pipe and occasionally joining in, but the stories always end with a meaningful look and a mention of…something. The term is dense and archaic, and Kíli can’t puzzle out its meaning. He only knows it’s meant to happen when he’s older. 

Dwalin appears then, and knuckles Kíli’s head, and brings him to his brother. A smell explodes in Kíli’s head: _Dwalin is a beta_. It’s a softer smell than the Hobbit’s, but strong, as befits Dwalin, and almost sweet. What’s wrong with him? “Kíli Vílul,” says Balin with a warm smile. _Alpha._ He claps Kíli’s shoulder with a strong hand. “It’s good to see you hale and healthy. Was the journey difficult?” 

An idea flickers to life in Kíli’s head. “Master Balin,” he says, “I’ve noticed something and Fíli’s being a prat about it. Can you help me?” Surely Balin has a solution, as he has a solution to everything from the proper way to write cirth runes to why Uncle can’t be woken in the middle of the night when he screams, no matter if he’s frightening everyone in the house. 

“Certainly, lad.” 

Kíli jerks his thumb towards the entrance to the dining room, through which he can see the entryway where he met this confusing, downright _confounding_ person. “The Hobbit’s an alpha,” he says. “I can smell it and Fíli’s being a great prat about it. Says I can’t smell it, but I tell you, I’m smelling it! I’m smelling yours, too! What’s going on?” 

The blood drains from Balin and Dwalin’s faces both, and in the lamplight, they look sick. “By Mahal’s _stones_ , not now,” says Dwalin fervently. “Couldn’t it ha’ waited until we took the mountain? Smith-damned –“ 

“Brother,” says Balin. His tone and expression are impossible to make out, and the last time he was that stolid, he was bringing ‘Amad the news that ‘Adad had…oh, no… 

“I’m not dying, am I?” Kíli bursts out. Immediately, he regrets it. Fíli’s always told him that the things he says without thinking make him sound like a right idiot, and Uncle didn’t even disagree the one time Fíli said so in his hearing, just kept on smoking his pipe and growled that Fíli shouldn’t be rude. “What’s going on, Master Balin?” 

“Sit down, please,” Balin sighs. Kíli takes a seat in one of the chairs at the Hobbit’s dining table. There’s some sort of commotion going on in the entryway, and when he cranes his neck and peers around Balin, he sees the rest of their Company fall through the door. Well, almost everyone; where’s Uncle? Has something happened to him? “ _Kíli_.” Balin snaps his fingers. “Pay attention. This is something important that’s happened to ye. Dwalin?” 

Dwalin stops fiddling his fingers in a glass biscuit jar with great reluctance and sits down beside Kíli and Balin. “Think, now, Kíli,” he says. “When ye saw the Hobbit, what was it exactly ye wanted to do wi’ him?” 

Kíli closes his eyes and breathes in deeply. The memory of the smell bursts into his head, deep and rich, but somehow soft, and then the Hobbit himself appears in his mind: so small and curly-headed in his shirt and bracers. He’s never seen a Hobbit in his life and this one…what does he want to do with this one’s snappish strength and quick way of comporting himself? 

“Well,” he finally says, opening his eyes, “I think I want him to hold me.” He looks down at his hands where they lie curled on the table, then chews on his lip and feels his cheeks heat. Perhaps that was the wrong thing to say, but he has no way of knowing. 

Now Balin’s cheeks go pink above his beard. Kíli has never seen that in his life, and he wishes there were some way to keep an image of that so everyone could see. “Mm,” he says. “That’s it, then. Kíli, lad, the Hobbit is yours. Your One, that is, and you’re an omega.” 

A squeak rises out of Kíli’s throat. “I thought I’d be a beta!” he bursts out before he can stop himself. Then – “My _One_? My One is a Hobbit?” 

“You knew _nothing_ o’this?” says Dwalin incredulously. “You’re a prince! No one’s explained? What sort o’ thickhead…!” He stops and slowly nods, something clearly having just hit him. “The Wanderin’ Times,” he says. “Of course no one’s explained. Not with so many dyin’. When the One comes, then you smell their alignment right off, and yours will take form, too.” 

“It’s only just formed, then,” says Kíli. He can feel that he’s bug-eyed. “Does it mean I’ll heat?” Oh, curse all the adults in his life to the deepest, smelliest dragon arse he can find for this. Uncle can go charge up Smaug’s arse for not telling him. Whose bright idea was it to tell him and Fíli the three alignments, but not why they came about? Might have been it was stuffy old sacred information, but it still should have been brought out if it concerned their bodies. 

The raucous noise in the hall suddenly leaps up a few notches, and Balin closes his eyes, massaging his temples with his fingers. “You’d have been told just before you came of age if we were in Erebor,” he says. “It’s highly improper earlier. Where were you when you came of age?” 

“I remember that,” says Kíli. “Master Glóin had us out on an apprenticeship. Smithing, drills, that sort of thing for a few months.” 

“That would be it,” says Dwalin. “All right, lad, up. They’ll be comin’ in here soon and I want some of the Hobbit’s food, if the rumors about their cookin’ is true. Best not say nowt about this to anyone.” 

Kíli stands up and glares at Dwalin. “’Course not.” He’s not a Dwarfling anymore. 

Dwalin reaches out and whacks Kíli’s arse with one huge hand in a fatherly sort of way. “Good, then. Go stuff yer face. Growin’ lads need it.” 

He’s an omega, but they’re not treating him like he’s weak. Some of the older Dwarves wouldn’t take ‘Adad’s carvings, though he could carry Kíli with one arm even when he was past twenty years old. Kíli doesn’t know why that would make anybody weak, nor why he feels tingles in his belly and lower back whenever he stares at Bilbo Baggins during supper. Bilbo stares back at him every so often, and his face is just as stricken as Kíli imagines he looks. 

The singing should soothe him, but no, he can’t get out of the room fast enough. Everyone’s smells together are making his nose hurt and his head spin, but most of all, there’s Bilbo’s smell just from him leaning in the doorway. _Alpha alpha alpha_ , it screams, and Kíli wants to run over and kiss him then and there. 

But he waits. It isn’t until everyone disperses to make their beds in the guest rooms (for Uncle, Balin, and Dwalin) or on the floors (for everyone else, and Kíli knows Fíli means to fart on him all night just to be a bastard) that he catches Bilbo in the hallway. “You’re my –“ 

“I know,” Bilbo interrupts him. “By everything good. How could this happen now?” 

The tingling feeling spreads into Kíli’s face. _He knows I’m his!_ But he still won’t let Bilbo insult him whether he’s Kíli’s One or not, so he plants his feet far apart, sets his jaw, and says “I’m good enough for you!” 

That’s when Bilbo grabs him by the hair, pulls him down, and gives him a kiss so deep and forceful that Kíli thinks he’s maybe set afire by some dragon that Bilbo’s been hiding here (and wouldn’t Uncle be angry at that!). Yet it’s only his body, and he doesn’t understand; he’s tumbled before, and kissed, and had all manner of secret bits of pleasure where ‘Amad and Uncle Thorin can’t find out (not that anything was wrong with that, since he was of age, but ‘Amad always said he wasn’t too old to take over her knee), and still, he’s never felt like this. 

“You are _mine_ ,” says Bilbo when they’ve finished. Kíli’s whole body warms and tingles, and he has no objection to that.

-

He heats just off the Carrock, and why nobody bloody _told_ him he would, he doesn’t know. “It’s the stress of it,” says Balin. His words are no comfort, but his alpha smell is; it’s no substitute for Bilbo’s, of course, but Kíli finds that any alpha calms the pain in his belly and the weakness in his legs. He finds himself trailing close behind Uncle, Balin, Óin, or Bombur as they walk across the green terrain to the home of Gandalf’s odd friend, the bear-skinchanger, though the smells don’t make any sense. _Who is Balin’s One? And Óin’s? Why does Dori have no smell at all? Everyone’s after him!_

Kíli’s head spins when they begin to run across the last stretch of open land to Beorn’s home, and he collapses in the straw, shivering, when they lock themselves in. He’s usually so fast that it frightens him, this weakness, this horrible wanting feeling. When normally the wind in his hair and the rush of cold air whipping by his cheeks only makes him want to run faster, now he only wants to curl up. 

Bilbo sits down on the straw next to him with much more dignity than Kíli knows he’s been exhibiting. “Kíli,” he whispers, “is it your heat?” 

Kíli nods. It’s unbearable now that Bilbo’s so close. His smell hits him in the face and it’s all Kíli can do to stay aware of what’s around him instead of focusing on Bilbo’s dilated eyes and reddened mouth. Whatever is going on in Kíli’s body has to have affected him, too. “What can we do?” 

Bilbo rubs a firm hand up and down Kíli’s back. Kíli’s eyes fall closed despite the fact that he doesn’t feel at all sleepy, as if there’s some magic in Bilbo’s hand with the power to soothe him. “Sleep a bit now,” the Hobbit says. “We’ll ask in the morning, when there’s not an enormous Valar-damned bear out there with a taste for our bones.” 

Kíli falls asleep to the echo of Bilbo’s voice, and in his dreams, his One takes the shape of a great bear, paws full of comb dripping with sweet honey. “Mate,” says the bear, “my mate.” Then the dream changes to a field full of flowers, where Bilbo lays him down and says “In the Shire, we would do this,” and then…

He wakes covered in sweat and bright red from head to toe, with the skinchanger standing over him. Beorn is almost more intimidating in daylight: tufted all over with brindled hair as if he’s stuck somewhere between bear and man. “The big bunny heats for the little one,” he says in a deep, queerly-accented voice. “Come. You may heat elsewhere. Should not disturb the others.” 

“Uncle?” Kíli asks through his dry throat. He looks towards Thorin, but finds his uncle’s eyes downcast. Everyone around him has moved away or begun to squirm. Has he made everyone else feel what he’s feeling, too? Guilt twists in his chest. He would never have come if he’d known his alignment would make a mess of everything Thorin’s worked to do. “I’ll…I’ll come.” 

Beorn swoops down and picks up him and Bilbo both, one in each arm. When he walks, it’s as though they’re riding an enormous tree, and his voice rumbles through Kíli’s bones. “We will bring you what you need,” he says. Kíli is about to ask whom Beorn’s referring to when he catches the eye of a sheep – a _sheep_ inside? – that has a platter of honey cakes in its mouth. The animals here must be as strange as Beorn, and as clever. 

“I’d expect not to be disturbed,” says Bilbo with a huff. 

Beorn laughs in a louder rumble than before. “You will not,” he says. Then they’re past the great hall full of benches flanking a table made of an enormous slab of wood, and he sets them down in a room just big enough for a large pallet filled with rustling straw and a jug of water on a rough-hewn wooden table. “Visitors don’t like to sleep in the hay,” he says by way of explanation. “I have few, but…” Beorn shrugs. “Call if you need anything. Someone will hear.” 

“Thank you,” says Bilbo, and sits down on the pallet as unsteadily as Kíli did when Beorn placed him near it. 

“There is no need for thanks,” Beorn answers. “Everyone must mate.” Then he leaves the room, closing the door behind him. 

Bilbo looks at Kíli. A smile plays about his mouth; suddenly, Kíli’s nose fills with his smell all over again. He’s fully roused now, but in a different way than he’s been – the overload of information Balin gave him as they approached Beorn’s land included information on what his body is doing to receive Bilbo’s, though not how uncomfortable it is. Then, Kíli doesn’t think Balin’s been uncomfortable a day in his life. “What will we do?” Bilbo asks. 

“You’ll have me?” says Kíli in a rush. “Please?” Every bit of him is throbbing in time with his heartbeat, head to toe, especially between his legs. 

He half-expects rejection, even with Bilbo having accepted that they’re always to be together. Instead, Bilbo leans over and kisses him. Kíli closes his eyes and lets the heat wash over him, and after that, he remembers nothing save that Bilbo’s touch is eerily close to the strange, swirling paths he left in his dream. 

No. No, that’s not all. When the heat breaks and he’s finally fit to join the rest of the Company again, the hot, tingling, all-consuming want has left his belly, but a new heaviness lies there instead. He remembers it beginning halfway through, and it lingers through their time at Beorn’s, as the bear-man insists on feeding him up and angers Bilbo by calling him a fat ‘little bunny’, all the way to the next portion of their quest.

-

The Elf-captain is the one to tell him what’s happened to him, and to treat him with any kindness, and for that, he loves her at once; her words and her smile remind him of how much he misses Ered Luin, and ‘Amad most of all. “Whose child is it?” she whispers through the bars when she brings him a piece of bread the night they are imprisoned. “Who is your alpha?”

“Whose _what_ is it?” Kíli repeats. Child? Who has a child? There can’t be a child. There’s no room for a child on this quest, so it’s not possible that anyone’s conceived one. 

The captain reaches through the bars and takes his hand. The gesture comforts him, and so does the touch of her cool, soft skin. _Alpha_.“You wouldn’t have noticed it for some months yet,” she says gently.

When Kíli’s head unfogs, the first thought he has is that he’s too young to have a child – what will ‘Amad think after she takes him over her knee? His second thought comes out in a panicked plea of “Please don’t tell anyone!” Bilbo is missing, probably dead. Uncle is too far away to help him, and anyway, they’re all locked up. If the Elf-king finds out, he’ll surely never let them leave. 

She nods and pats his hand. “I will tell no one,” she says, “and I hope for your sake that your alpha is well and whole. It is a sad day when one must bring a child into the world with a grieving parent.” 

Kíli’s lip trembles. “I hope so, too.” Bilbo _has_ to have survived whatever they’ve gone through, and Kíli is carrying his child. His head still spins with the juxtaposition of those two facts. “Thank you.” In the dankness of this prison, she’s been kind. 

“My name is Tauriel,” she says. “Should you be mistreated, ask for me and I will deal with the offenders.” 

“And my fellow Dwarves, too,” Kíli says. He won’t stand for special treatment. 

“Yes,” she says after a pause, “your fellow Dwarves, too.” 

She walks away with soft, shushing steps, leaving Kíli to stare after her into the twisting corridor. He sighs and leans his head against the bars; tears fill his eyes, and his hair falls down in front of his face. He wants Uncle, and ‘Amad, and Fíli, and Bilbo most of all. 

“Kíli!” comes a frantic voice. “ _Kíli!_ ” 

Kíli’s head comes up so fast that he hears his neck crack. “Bilbo! Where are you?” He hopes beyond hope that he’s not imagining Bilbo’s voice, or he’ll know he’s gone mad as well as sad. This place, with its sharp scent of green things and rotting soil, with its cold-eyed ruler, would be a terrible place to die mad and alone. “Are you here?” 

“Yes,” Bilbo answers, and suddenly pops into Kíli’s view. One moment, he can see only the dimness of their prison, and then the next, there is Bilbo, dirty, scraped up all over, and alive. He surges forward and presses himself against Kíli through the bars, shaking. “Did I hear her say there’s a child?” 

Kíli tries to nod against Bilbo’s shoulder and ends up knocking his head against the bars in the attempt. “I didn’t know I would,” he says. “I’ve never met a male Dwarf with a child. One of his body, I mean. And nobody talks about the alignment in public – it’s not polite. Did you know I would?” 

Bilbo spits out a laugh. “My dear,” he says, “why do you think there are so many of us Hobbits about?” 

Kíli’s vision blurs in front of him, and he suspects he’s got on that expression that ‘Amad calls ‘a bit cross-eyed.’ “S’pose I can learn something new every day,” he says, and then he bends down and kisses Bilbo’s face all over. “I’ve missed you, Bilbo.” 

“ _Kíli_ ,” Bilbo sighs. “Blasted bars! I’d be in there with you in a trice if I could. But I don’t think my belly would allow it.” 

“I like your belly,” Kíli offers, and Bilbo blushes. “But look, Bilbo, you’ve got to keep yourself safe. Hide if you see anyone coming.” An Alpha isn’t the only one who can be protective. Bilbo may have gotten him with Dwarfling, or Hobbitling, or whatever they’re going to call it, but that won’t stop Kíli from being strong for him, too. 

Bilbo gives him a strange little smile. “I promise I’ll be safe, my love,” he says. “Now I think I’ve got to let everyone else know I’m alive. I’ve got some spying to do to see you all out safe.” 

“Bilbo, wait,” Kíli says, as Bilbo turns around. 

“Hm?” 

“Tell Uncle.” Kíli grips the bars, suddenly struck with desperation. “Tell him about the babe. I – I don’t know what that Elf-king wants to do to him. He’s got to know so he can go on being strong for Erebor. Please tell him.” 

Bilbo goes up on his toes and kisses Kíli on the mouth, though it’s a tight fit, making Kíli’s cheekbones bump into the cold bars. “I will,” he says. “I promise.”

-

Frodin is born in the first crisp days of fall since snow fell over the ruins of the battle, after a pregnancy somewhere between the length of a Hobbit’s and a Dwarf’s. Óin explained to Kíli how his body would change, forming a passage that would birth his and Bilbo’s child, swelling every joint so that he’ll be well relaxed for the birth, but he seems to have neglected to tell either Kíli or Bilbo about these… _feelings_.

“He has Uncle’s eyes,” says Kíli. “Or he will, I think. Mine were brown when I was born.” The baby is so tiny, fitting easily in the crook of his elbow, and though Fíli poked fun and said he had a head shaped like a cone, he’s beautiful; black curls lie pasted to his elongated head, and his wee nose scrunches just as Bilbo’s does. 

“So he does,” says Bilbo, expression shadowed. Kíli can only imagine what he’s thinking - _throw him from the ramparts_ roared in Uncle’s voice, and Kíli diving to take Uncle by the throat against the wall, _you won’t take my One from me_ , and the sickness leaving Thorin’s eyes. “They’ll be lovely.” He cups the baby’s face. “What shall we call him? I thought he would be a girl.” 

Kíli snorts. “I told you,” he says, “dams are a miracle for first births. I think Mahal Himself would’ve had to show up to make one.” 

“Then I’m terribly glad that you’re my Omega and he isn’t.” Bilbo’s tone is wry, but his touch is reverent as he takes the baby from Kíli’s arms. Kíli lets him; he aches all over, and their son is Bilbo’s, too. “If we were in the Shire, I would say he looks like an Odo.” 

Kíli can’t see it, but that might be the stuff Óin poured down his throat after he birthed, because everything looks a bit fuzzy around the edges. “What do you want to call him, then? Since we’re in Erebor and all.” 

Bilbo purses his lips, and the baby does, too. “What about calling him for your uncle? Not Thorin, of course. His brother. The one who died – Frerin?” 

“Frodin,” Kíli corrects. “That way, he can have part of a name from both of us.” 

Kíli suspects Bilbo agrees only because he’s got so much of that poppy stuff in his system and he feels sorry for him, but their son is named Frodin Baggins, Prince of Erebor, as soon as Kíli is able to stand up without falling over or leaking anything disgusting. Thorin presses the baby to the sacred stones, his tiny body wrapped in a purple robe that has served to cloak princes for generation upon generation, and all the while, there are tears in his eyes. 

That’s the first moment Kíli truly thinks their quest was worthwhile, but from then on, he never doubts it again.


End file.
